This invention is related to the field of ethylene homopolymer compositions and ethylene copolymer compositions.
Ultraviolet light has a wave length from about 10 to about 400 nanometers. Ultraviolet light tends to degrade a polymer composition into a less useful composition. However, ultraviolet light can be used to cure labels and certain types of printing inks on to polymer articles. One of the advantages of using ultraviolet light to cure these printing inks is that these printing inks contain very little solvent in their composition. This promotes the fast curing of these printing inks. Furthermore, this also minimizes the fire hazard that is usually associated with the more conventional solvent-based printing inks. However, more importantly, since there is very little solvent in these ultraviolet light-curable, printing inks, they pose less of an environmental hazard to the atmosphere than the more conventional solvent-based printing inks. This is because about 30 to about 60 wt. % of a conventional solvent-based printing ink evaporates into the atmosphere during processing.
Polymers can be protected from the harmful effects of ultraviolet light by compounding them with specially designed compositions. Usually these compositions are added to a polymer as part of an additive package. Those additive packages are often specifically designed for a particular polymer, in a particular polymer application, and in a particular polymer operating environment. However, forming these additive packages is a highly unpredictable area of polymer science and engineering.